This page covers building OpenSimulator from source code on multiple platforms. Please help us keep this page up to date as the project progresses. If you just want to run OpenSimulator, Download and run the binary build instead. In the most cases, you should be fine with binaries.

Download OpenSimulator

Check out the Download page for instructions on obtaining an OpenSimulator source release. If you are especially interested in unstable sources in git master, see Using Git to know how to get them. After getting the sources, build them by following steps.

General Notes

Although this page is long, building is generally quite simple. See the BUILDING.txt file in the distribution itself for simplified instructions. This page discusses what you need to do before actual building.

Compiling in IDE

Compiling in Command Prompt

Run "runprebuild.bat".

Run the resulting "compile.bat" file or run "nant". This will build the executable using MSBuild(the former) or nant(the latter).

Additional Notes

You can run OpenSimulator on 64-bit Windows(Vista, Windows 7 ...) today, but if you want to debug it in Visual Studio, you'll need to add OpenSim.32BitLaunch to the solution and set it as startup project. See OpenSimulator in Visual Studio on Win64@Tedds blog for details.

For those that use a Cygwin shell, you may need to fix DLLs permissions issue by typing "chmod 755 *.dll *.exe" in the bin directory.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X 10.5 and later, Intel

and then install them - now no need to install XCode nor MacPort (you can still install mono dev libraries and nant with MacPort though).

When you run nano to build OpenSimulator, it may show an error like "Unable to locate 'mono' module using pkg-config. Download the Mono
development packages". I suspect XCode or MacPort causes something wrong (since it worked fine after I removed both), but I'm not sure. Anyway, insert a line into /usr/bin/nant script file to manage this problem :

You can even compile and debug OpenSimulator with MonoDevelop IDE after running "runprebuild.sh". Open the solution file(*.sln) with MonoDevelop IDE then select Build -> Build All from the menu.

Mac OS X 10.4/10.5 on PowerPC

OpenSimulator can run on PowerPC Macs (such as G4, G5). These instructions were tested on 10.5.8. Note that two libraries must also be built from source. Caveat: the OpenSimulator app was only briefly tested in self-contained mode. There may well be issues with this build. Feel free to note any issues you find below (or in a new wiki page? discussion?).

Unfortunately, the OpenSimulator version used here must be compiled on one version of Mono (2.6.7) and run on another (2.8.2). This means either upgrading Mono after the build, or having both versions installed and accessing the older version when you want to build. These instructions let you have both versions installed.

Install Xcode 3.1.4 Developer Tools from from http://developer.apple.com/. You must have a free Apple developer account to access the downloads. 3.1.4 was the last PowerPC Xcode.

(10.4 only) Install X11 from the Optional Install (or see if it's a Customize option when you install Xcode). 10.5 gets X11 by default (from OS X or dev tools?).

As of mono 2.6 series, xbuild works well enough to drive a complete build of OpenSimulator. Since xbuild is included within the mono-complete package on Ubuntu, you don't have to install any additional packages if you don't have any particular reason to prefer nant over xbuild. They are just two different build systems that invoke the same C# compiler based on two different build script formats.

OPTIONAL (for developers): To run the regression test suite, you will also need to install nunit-console, like so

sudo apt-get install nunit-console
nant test

RHEL, Fedora, CentOS or other RedHats

After getting run your OpenSimulator binary distributions, you'll need to get mono development library and install nant to build OpenSimulator from the source. See both sections below.

Installing NAnt

Run "yum info nant" to check the version of nant package. If you find the package, then just type:

sudo yum install nant

You can now run nant out-of-the-box.

If you can't find nant package in yum repository, or you feel its version is too early for building OpenSimulator, obtain NAnt from NAnt Project Site. See User Manual there for detailed instruction. As of 0.90, you will need to create startup script like that (given you have expanded NAnt to /usr/local/nant) :

sudo vi /usr/bin/nant

Then inside this file :

#!/bin/sh
exec mono /usr/local/nant/bin/NAnt.exe "$@"

After that, make it executable :

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/nant

You can now run runprebuild.sh and nant to compile OpenSimulator.

openSUSE

Just type:

sudo zypper install nant

before run runprebuild.sh and nant. It will also install dependent packages.